I went to the “Dramatic Storytelling In Games” by Seamus Sullivan. I believe what stood out to me the most was his first point about world building. The first point was “Make the environment say something about the characters, and vice versa.” For this point, he talked about the game Myst. As you play through the game, you find some seriously creepy things about the two characters that you are trying to “free” from a book they are trapped in. He mentioned that you find things such as furniture made out of bones. The world you are in eventually reveals to you that these two men are seriously shady characters and probably would do you great harm if you freed them from their captivity.

For the “vice versa” of this tip, he talked about how Portal 2 uses the character Wheatley to show things about the world in which you are placed. As Wheatley first comes in to where you, the character, have been “hibernating,” it is obvious alone from his tone of voice and strange way of saying things that something is drastically wrong in the world of Aperture Laboratories. It is also obvious, by the mere fact that a robot is running the place, that a huge amount of time has passed and there are absolutely no other human beings around to keep things under control. The world has fallen into disarray. The player gets all of this just from a few minutes of game play at the beginning, interacting with one character alone.

I could say so much more about this conference, but this will have to suffice. I thoroughly enjoyed everything Seamus Sullivan had to say about storytelling in games.

As a play writer, I was not surprised that Seamus Sullivan said, “Drama is in every videogame.” We invest our times into the characters, story, and action, and therefore characterization is a very important part of videogames. However, I was most struck by the idea of dialogue and how such a simple scene between two characters can reveal so much about their personalities and traits. Sullivan re-enacted a scene from the game, “The Secret of Monkey Island”, and display the naïve voice of the main character, Guybrush Threepwood. From a 60 second dialogue, not only were we able to infer what was happening in the story, but we also infer Threepwood’s polite and forgetful personality. I agree that dialogue is the most difficult to write, whether it is in a story, movie, play or a videogame. Having the right words and the right amount of words can affect the characters and story greatly. One of the greatest tips for dialogue has to be show and not tell. This same advice was given to me by my 8th grade English teacher and I see that it can be very effective in games. Showing the story allows the creator to evoke different moods, tones and feelings. Using fewer words can also be effective because it eliminates clunky sentences that may confuse the audience. To master these obstacles in dialogue, it is important that the creator continues to write, revise and ask for other people’s opinion. Therefore videogames contain many qualities that are attached in film, stories and plays, and we sometime forget the intricacy of such a simple game like “Super Mario”.

The time: 12:30pm, April 17th

The place: Writing for Games Conference- Dramatic Storytelling in Games

The hero: Seamus Sullivan.

Seamus wants to impart his knowledge of dramatic character development to the next generation.  He may not be tall or have Superman’s strength and good looks, but he wants to make the world a better place by eliminating weak characters and bad storytelling.

But it is an uphill battle.  On his Journey, Seamus must face the mighty Powerpoint Demon and outsmart the cunning YouTube Siren.  With Skill and Grace he overcomes these foes and delivers his message of hope for game narratives everywhere.

That was my attempt at using Seamus Sullivan’s tips to create a more dramatic narrative.  Maybe it worked, maybe it didn’t.  But one thing I’ll be sure to remember is to have my heroes save the cat.  Three cheers for tips that sound funny enough to remember! Saving the cat means that early in your narrative, your characters should all be allowed to do something minor but distinctive, to clue the audience in as to which characters are the good guys (and which ones are the bad guys). Don’t stick to the Super Objective religiously- give your characters chances to show who they are (or even the player a chance to decide who their character will be?)  For instance, the bad guy might spend his free time kicking cats.  And the hero might volunteer at the SPCA.

While discussing this type of character development, all I can think of is the old Dudley Do-Right cartoons.  The cat rescue was the whole plot, and the character development was quick-and-dirty, but it uses a lot of showing and smart dialogue and only a little telling.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q83Jqd2h0Yg&w=420&h=315]

Seamus Sullivan introduced himself immediately as somebody who is not intimately involved with the video game industry, but as a playwright. Before anything else, a game is a drama. We invest in the game in order to see if the character will succeed or fail. The difference between a movie and a game is that the player has an impact on the overall outcome. Characterization, dialogue, and world interaction are all aspects that distinguish between a good game and a game with carefully crafted characters.
Character Tip #1: Start with what your character wants and how they pursue it. What is their main objective, or super objective? This becomes the goal of the game and can change throughout the game.
Character Tip #2: Apply the Plinkett Test. This test is to describe the character without describing the character’s profession, appearance, or what they do in the story. The way we describe a character using the Plinkett Test is why we are interested in the character. The things that you don’t include in the test are the reasons why we enjoy playing the game.
Character Tip #3: Show, don’t tell. Don’t use words where imagery will work instead. Rather than having a narrator or another character describe the characteristics of a character when those traits could be shown through a scene or an action.
Character Tip #4: Have your hero save the cat. Let the audience know early on who they should be rooting for. Similarly, have the villain do something early on that defines him as evil.
Character Tip #5: Give our characters distinctive voices. Both the sound of their voice and the things that they say make the character memorable. A great example for those familiar with Portal 2 is Wheatley.
Dialogue Tip #1: Find a new way to say it. Rather than say “i dont’ want to die” create a way to say it unique to the situation and character involved.
Dialogue Tip #2: Avoid stock expressions and cliches. These phrases don’t teach the player anything about who the character is. The more cliches there are, the less interested players will be in the character.
Dialogue Tip #3: Omit needless words. This is especially important in dialogue. Every word must tell something about the character. Watch 30 minute shows for examples of this concise dialogue.
Dialogue Tip #4: Keep it active. How do the words or tone of what one character says affect the other characters? There are endless ways to deliver each line.
Dialogue Tip #5: Avoid expository dialogue, or at least hide it well. Never have a character tell another character something that they already know. If you’re explaining something, make sure it’s something that really needs to be explained or is being told for another reason.
Dialogue Tip #6: Read it aloud. If the dialogue is bad, it will sound awkward or clunky or too long when read aloud. When writing dialogue, get friends to act it out.
Dialogue Tip #7: Keep writing and rewriting. Accept when lines don’t work and recreate them into something new and better.
World Building Tip #1: Make your world say something about the characters, and vice versa. The world should shape who the characters are, they can’t be completely out of place. Characters should not leave their world completely untouched.
World Building Tip #2: Make your world provoke as strong an emotional response as a character does. The environment should almost feel like another character. Portal’s world give you a sense of being a lab rat and that you’re being watched, evoking a sense of paranoia and a desire to escape. Once you reach the back paths of the laboratory, the dirty roughness of the place shows you that things have been going very wrong in the labs.

Overall, i think that this lecture was very interesting and showed me a lot about the effort that goes into video games that we, as players, may not always see or think about. I enjoyed the relatable examples of popular games that many people have played, or at least heard about, that gave me a tangible example of the point that Sullivan was demonstrating.

Before I took this class,  I may have completely agreed with Gonzalo Frascou’s article, “Videogames of the Oppressed”. Throughout the article, he describes why videogames cannot be an integral part of social change. When asked if it is possible for social and personal change to occur through videogames at the end of his article, Frascou simply says “no”.

Due to not being the most avid videogame player, the only games that would have come to mind would have been games such as “World of Warcraft” or “Call of Duty”; games that don’t particularly encourage personal or social change. However, through this class, we’ve played games such as Dys4ia, Spent, and ImmorTall; games that, to me, can inspire these changes that Frascou disagrees with. He states that while games and narratives share many elements,  a narrative is  a “fixed series of actions and descriptions, videogames need the active participation of the user not just for interpretational matters” (Frascou). While this is true, a narrative also requires user participation of a certain sort. If one reads a novel, such as “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair, but doesn’t interpret the meaning of the novel or even attempt to, then the narrative of the story is wasted. Videogames are very much the same, especially, in my opinion, Dsy4ia and Spent. For me personally, both games made me rethink certain elements of my own life.

Frascou also states that “videogames are not a good choice for historic or characters making moral statements” (Frascou). For certain events, such as Anne Frank as he uses as an example, I agree, because they are too controversial, even for certain writing, movies, and other forms of media. However, the game we played, ImmorTall, used the alien character to make a statement of war without explicitly saying so within the narrative of the game.

While Frascou makes good points, I think that with technology and globalization paving the way for the future, he has outdated ideas. Places such as Facebook and even, within recent years and the expansion, videogames are becoming important ways to spread moral statements, ideas, and proponents for social change. People use these and other parts of technology every day and traditional methods of communication are becoming less used. While these games we played in class are not very well-known, are there any recent games that are popular in our culture that can be viewed as vehicles for social change or how can they be changed or modified in order to do so?